


how to increase your diplomatic standing using only your lips

by cykelops



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:33:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23550115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cykelops/pseuds/cykelops
Summary: Jean-Luc LeBeau sticks his nose in places he shouldn't because that's where they hide all the good stuff.
Relationships: Jean-Luc LeBeau/Erik Lehnsherr
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	how to increase your diplomatic standing using only your lips

**Author's Note:**

> I want to write more multi-chapter and right now this absolute rareship won't let go of me. Strap in and have fun. 
> 
> I am a slow burn writer and this will be an exceptionally slow burn unless I let myself go a little.

Every father thinks their boy is special and Jean-Luc LeBeau was no different. His boy was destined for great things. It coursed in his blood, engraved in his soul. His mutation was part of it, of course, but only a fraction. His character was not the product of a few clever modifications to his DNA from the man upstairs and, while he was very much a product of his upbringing, his resistance to Jean-Luc's piss poor parenting was the more commendable feat of nature. 

It struck him as deeply unjustified that the X-Men never recognised his true worth. In the streets of Louisiana, at the heart of the French Quarter, the name Remy LeBeau meant something. He was a prince of thieves, occasional guildmaster, and the highest class of pickpocket the Bayou had ever seen. He was nearly as handsome as his daddy and his Southern charms came with a healthy dose of old-fashioned chivalry. His boy was a brushstroke of gold laid by God himself upon the lackluster grey of the world. It was unfortunate that politics and the twisted hands of fate should drive him so far from home. In Westchester he was an outcast. He was kept at arm's length like a diseased mutt, sometimes by convenient enough necessity and others simply because he was not well liked and no one would vouch for him. 

His boy, his precious, perfect, stubborn boy, was a _rabid_ _dog_ to the X-Men.

But that had changed, Remy assured him. He was married now. He was part of a team again. People looked up to him. Krakoa was a fresh start for  _ everyone _ . It had notes of  _ even me _ in it.

Jean-Luc couldn't get it past his boy's thick skull that he didn't need redeeming. He was perfect just the way he'd been born. Men didn't say those things, though. Remy was too old for coddling and Jean-Luc was too set in his ways to change that. 

Remy gave him a key and a flower and asked him to visit often now that he had a place to  _ really _ call his own, and not a four-by-four where he depended on the X-Men's willingness to let a world-renown thief stop by. Jean-Luc wore the key around his wrist, it was like one of those newfangled wristbands you got at county fairs instead of tickets, and it let him through the flower portal. Remy explained it had something to do with a drop of his blood and alien tech, but Jean-Luc preferred not to know the details. Give him demons and magic any day but aliens? Awful business.

Krakoa was a whole new country. That took a while to hit him, but when it did it hit him hard. He didn't have to take so much as a trolley to leave the States. All he had to do was step through an iridescent doorway grown from a magic weed and he would be there in an instant. Sometimes he would let his hand through first, just to  _ feel  _ it. Standing in his own loft with his fingers in another hemisphere. It was fascinating.

He was one of  _ very  _ few humans with relatively unchecked access to Krakoa. The island could revoke his entry at any moment—the consciousness of the ground he stood on was among Krakoa's most bewildering quirks—but he wasn't confined to Remy's home. He was free to explore. Remy implored him not to abuse that privilege. Of course he did so anyway. No place was clearly marked off limits but he wasn't stupid. The heavily guarded congestion of vines and glowing red windows (eyes?) stood out like a sore thumb even among Krakoa's varied architecture. Jean-Luc was drawn to it, ever the moth to the flame. He was not about to steal from Remy's family but he wasn't  _ just  _ a thief. He was an adventurer. An explorer. Krakoa was brimming with untapped potential for discovery. 

The security, which at first glance seemed tight, proved laughably inadequate. He was too quick and clever to be spotted. The grooved walls of interlocking vegetation provided ample cover for his lean body. Jean-Luc was sure to pat the ground every once in a while to remind Krakoa that he was a friend and they were only playing a game. If he was sussed out by a mutation he could not outwit with thief's tricks he could just say he was doing a sweep of the area to report back to Xavier with advice on how to improve the system. 

The interior of the circular structure was fairly straightforward, but navigating it was a slow process because so many of the halls were indistinguishable from one another at first glance. With Jean-Luc's quick sense for patterns he got through the chambers leading towards the center faster than most interlopers. There wasn't much of note in any of the rooms he encountered. They contained nothing except bulbous golden growths sprouting from the grassy ground and towards the ceiling. Most small, but some as big as an wardrobe. To Jean-Luc they looked very similar to the red spheres that Krakoa's trees wreathed themselves around and that always seemed to… watch him, somehow. These gold ones didn't have so intimidating a presence but they appeared be— well, breathing.

He kept his hands off them because he didn't want to hurt them. Whatever they were, they were alive. Perhaps he had overzealously stumbled onto Krakoa's beating heart. It was unseasonably hot inside the building like someone had turned the radiator way up. More than once Jean-Luc was tempted to strip down to his unmentionables or at least remove his trenchcoat but he could not risk anyone finding his clothes in either case. 

Finally, he reached the center. It was marked by a spiraling tree trunk holding up the entire structure and paths branching in every direction, including the door Jean-Luc thought of as his. Air whistled between his teeth as he took in the trunk, fat with the golden bulbs like shuddering fruit. By his rudimentary calculations, it would take at least fifteen men with their arms outstretched to fully circle its girth. What  _ were  _ they? He was absurdly reminded of bagworms. Jean-Luc moved closer, compelled by a curiosity that outmatched his caution. He rubbed the side of his hand across the glistening surface. It felt smooth and warm like eggs fresh out the chicken coop.

Eggs.

It all happened very fast. Something lurched forward from the depths of the egg in front of him and Jean-Luc fell on his ass. He saw a crown of white hair pushing against the outer membrane. The crack of a  _ hand _ breaking through the shell, a translucent orange film sticking to their skin, chilled him. The liquid that had obscured the egg's occupant while appearing perfectly translucent spilled onto the floor and towards Jean-Luc's boots as a leg kicked itself free. It took every ounce of his self restraint not to scream until his eyes locked with a cloudy purple pair and his tongue was more than willfully silent.

Jean-Luc wore a chain with a small bottle-shaped pendant containing one of Remy's teeth. Not baby teeth, but one he'd partially lost as the result of a root canal when he was eleven. Jean-Luc hadn't been around when he was losing baby teeth. It wrapped around his throat and for an instant tightened so forcefully as to nearly crush his windpipe before loosening into more manageable but still bruising pressure. The outstretched hand making clutching motions in his direction was the obvious indicator that the other man's mutation was responsible. Jean-Luc slid closer across the ground by a tug on his boots and the world swirled overhead. 

"Who are you?" The wet figure asked in a voice crackling with disuse. He had to be taller than Jean-Luc by a few inches as he stood larger than the cocoon-egg thing he'd hatched from, though it was not easy to accurately estimate his height while writhing on the floor. It was a rushed assumption to call them a  _ he  _ as Jean-Luc had no information on the subject beyond the unreliable cut of his nakedness. He tried to answer, but in the second he had hesitated to speak the chain had rendered him unable to do so. "What are you doing in here, human?" 

He looked to the band around his wrist with displeasure. His hand went flat and then lifted, releasing his chain in favor of tugging him by the buttons on his coat. He brought him close enough to examine his face whilst hunched over him, head twitching with a hawk's interest. Jean-Luc's chain was mostly fake gold, the tips of his boots steel. White hair, purple eyes. It didn't take a genius to figure out the man in front of him was the human-hating  _ Magneto _ . Just his luck.

"Jean-Luc LeBeau. Human. Invited by Remy and Rogue LeBeau." He catalogued him. He said his name pretty with the inflection of somehow who knew the language. Jean-Luc was a little proud to have a memorable face. Magneto softened upon recognition. "You're not supposed to be in here. This chamber is for the healing of mutants. There is nothing for you to steal, thief. Every square inch of Krakoa is priceless." 

Jean-Luc had a few choice words about that but doubted arguing in favor of the money he could make off the right information brokers or pharmaceutical companies if he got a hold of one of Krakoa's nifty fix-it pills would make it easier for the man to let him go with his life. His mouth moved wordlessly, experience urged him to talk his way out of this but he could only stare at the man in front of him and his fine nose and cheeks sharp as a mandolin. He had been  _ inside  _ that airtight bud and emerged fresh as Venus from the clamshell. Jean-Luc had seen a lot of magic in his lifetime, but nothing like this. 

"Why are you here?" He shook him. His eyes went wide and his head snapped around the hall, frantic. "Is it Rogue? Is she—" 

Around the second time he spun Jean-Luc's feet hit the ground and he regained his balance. The man in front of him, however, swayed dangerously in place, breathing as if winded, and nearly collapsed. Jean-Luc caught him just before he fell on his face. The man clutched his heaving breast, wisps of white hairs beneath his fingers. He was heavy and solid as a slab of rock but there was more to Jean-Luc's weightlifting than his build might indicate. This would have been the perfect opportunity to run if he hadn't been recognized, but he wasn't keen on leaving another person to die just for a clean escape. He held the other man by the trunk of his chest and stretched him out slowly so Jean-Luc could kneel on the ground with the upper half of twitching body on his lap. The air didn't come out of him right. Someone had punched a hole in his straw. His hand stopped moving over the right side of his chest and his eyes went completely blank. His chest stilled next. Static traveled up his arms where their skin touched. Jean-Luc thought he was about to have a corpse in his arms but he awoke from his stupor with a start. 

"One of my lungs is missing." He shared helpfully. 

"Hell in a handbasket, tell me that always been the case. They forget to grow you one in there?" He joked. It  _ landed.  _ The other man let out a painful wheeze of a laugh and clung to the arm Jean-Luc held over his side. His skin was so  _ soft  _ and perfumed like citrus. An indiscrete urge to ask permission to touch him more nearly bubbled out of him. 

"No, it has not always been the case." He looked up at Jean-Luc through his thick, pale lashes as not to crane his neck while his chest settled. He was older, but his age had nothing to do with that hair. It was too full and stark white. "Are you here to kill, steal, or cheat us, Jean-Luc LeBeau?" 

" _ Non _ ." He said firmly. The whole ordeal seemed very stupid all of the sudden. Krakoa's secrets weren't his to explore. He was lucky to have stumbled upon a naked man instead of something that might kill rather than bruise. "Just snoopin' where I got no business snoopin' and getting myself in trouble." 

"I am glad you realize as much." His hand traveled towards Jean-Luc's elbow and squeezed. There wasn't much strength in his grip and combined with the unbearable softness it reminded Jean-Luc of a newborn babe. "You should run along now, LeBeau. Charles will be here soon and he will wipe this from your memory if he finds you."

"What?" Jean-Luc's tongue turned to lead in his mouth. Before he could stammer out any more questions, that soft, soft hand came up to his mouth and pressed his lips together between its knuckles. 

"I do this for Rogue, because no one should be separated from their family. I understand that firsthand. Stay and your memory will be warped, you will not be allowed to set foot in Krakoa or any of its habitats again for the foreseeable future." His eyes and voice were distant, whether from vertigo and breathlessness or an ailment that could not be physically placed. Loss. He demanded again. "Leave and see your son and daughter-in-law again." 

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth a second time and sure as sure could be that he meant every word, Jean-Luc extracted himself from underneath the other man and set his head down gently on a fluffy mound of grass. Magneto took his careful handling with an arched brow, but nodded once Jean-Luc stood. He felt strangely like he should leave him his coat, but nudity was the least of his problems. There was nothing he could do but run, retracing every step that had brought him inside, after sparing one last glance to the white-haired man on the floor and the eyes that bore into his back long after he was out of sight. He couldn't shake off the feeling that they would see each other again. Soon.


End file.
